That £3.4m salary will be Scudamore's. Consider how long he has been in that role. 20 years, I think. Consider how much money therefore he has personally banked in that time. (I think he was earning half a mill within 2 years of being appointed)

The Champions League final will be between Juventus and one of the Madrid clubs....

Comments

Unfortunately all the premier league cares about is letting Chinese companies sponsor the toilets in places like old trafford so they can take a cut and MUTV can get a couple more million subscribers who are being forced to like football because it's what their president is interested in

I have always argued that in order to put English football back into financial equilibrium, the FAPL as a separate entity needs to be disbanded, and responsibility for TV revenue distribution put back in the hands of a reformed FA, thus replicating the structure in Germany, where football at every level from grass roots to national team performs better than in England. Here is stark evidence to support my case, I would assert.

The appalling arrogance and lack of accountability of the FAPL is summarised in their assumption that it is their money to dispense like alms money to the rest of football. It's not their money. It's our money. We are the stakeholders in this. Without us, it would not exist.

Oh wait, some people will say, so much money comes from overseas now. So what? Try moving the FAPL lock stock and barrel to SE Asia and see how that works. The FAPL is part of English football. It is rooted here in its stadia, its traditions, its unique fan culture, which does not require some clown with a megaphone to tell fans when and what to chant. This was true long before the FAPL was created, and the former sales director of Yellow Pages started trousering shedloads of money for negotiating deals with TV companies that they are all falling over themselves to conclude. If you ask foreign fans to name top English clubs they've heard of, the names of Leeds, Blackburn, Bolton, Aston Villa Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday are more likely to be named than those of Watford, Bourenmouth or Crystal frigging Palace. There is no justification, for the FAPL to be a separate entity which dispenses the money generated by English football.

I saw that...their utter arrogance is breathtaking.The upper echelons of the game couldn't give a shit about anything outside of the EPL and the EFL couldn't give a shit about rogue owners trashing clubs.

The game is totally fucked.

The fans need to take football back from these overpaid jokers..disband the EPL and the EFL.

I know I'm living in a dream world but I'd rather live there then in the current nightmare which is unfolding.

Buoyed by their latest record-breaking £8bn broadcast deal, Premier League clubs will pay Football League teams the following in 'solidarity payments' this year; £4.3m to each Championship side, and £650,000 and £430,000 respectively to clubs in League One and Two.

These payments have risen, and are now linked to TV income. But given the financial challenges and debts many Football League clubs face, and the vast sums their Premier League counterparts give to players and agents, some believe they should be more generous.

Why are clubs in the lower leagues only getting this much? And why the big gap between the Championship and League One, let alone the Championship and the Premier League?

They say the Premier League is the biggest and most exciting league in the world. How so? Hardly any goals in the previous 2 weekends prior to this last one, the title wrapped up (albeit not mathematically), the top 7 decided, and theoretically only one relegation place to be decided 3 weeks before the end of the season.

Compare that to the Football league, where the final day of the season saw title deciders and thrilling relegation battles for both the Championship and League 2. Add into that the play offs for all 3 leagues, and I think I know what is more exciting to me.

Yet, the Premier League give the Football League sod all, and the Football League have the audacity to say that they are only competition organisers, lapping up the spilt milk left behind by the top league.

And the FA stand by and do nothing whilst clubs with great history are being run into the ground by incompetent owners and almost out of business due to unpaid tax bills (which are often half of what they get from the Premier League each year), whilst transfer and agents fees are at an all time fee in the Premier League where, let's be fair, fans are still treated like crap with excessive ticket and merchandise prices.

Really wish the Premier League would completely break away from the rest of the Football League.

The twenty clubs in the Division at the time (even if that includes Crystal Palace and Millwall) can just go away, have their own sole League and do whatever they want, hopefully it'll result in people getting bored with no Domestic Cup competitions and no relegation etc. and it'll slowly just wilt away and die.

The Championship can then become the top tier of English Football which can be properly controlled by the FA.

The Premier League can even keep European Qualification yet please just go away now!!

Or better still let them form the global breakaway league they keep talking about with all the top clubs. It will fall flat on its arse because you can't buy a culture, just like places like the MLS and China have and will find out.

I don't think I watch any CL anymore. I know it can be breathtaking when you get games like PSG and Barcelona, but it can also be incredibly plastic

In addition, if you go to football every week (I know some of us aren't because of circumstance at the moment), you can be footballed out. My passion as a supporter means I can stand in the pissing rain at Yeovil and get soaked to the bone for a 1-1 draw ahead of the prospect of watching Man Utd compete in the Dubai open and other silly 'brand' tournaments

If I'm honest, If people don't get that then I question if they get football at all

Really wish the Premier League would completely break away from the rest of the Football League.

The twenty clubs in the Division at the time (even if that includes Crystal Palace and Millwall) can just go away, have their own sole League and do whatever they want, hopefully it'll result in people getting bored with no Domestic Cup competitions and no relegation etc. and it'll slowly just wilt away and die.

The Championship can then become the top tier of English Football which can be properly controlled by the FA.

The Premier League can even keep European Qualification yet please just go away now!!

All the evidence from the American sports would suggest that it wouldn't wither and die though.

I've been thinking about this since the BBC ran with the story and I think the only way this can be addressed would be from Government intervention. Maybe they should make all football matches to be accessible on free to air channels like they do with Wimbledon. Or introduce a new tax for TV revenues over a certain level and then share that money with the EFL clubs.

Sadly though, the argument is that almost all football clubs fail to live within their means so giving them (the EFL clubs) more money won't really help as they will tend to spend more than 100% of the marginal revenue. It looks, to the outside world, that all clubs only stop spending (wasting) money with they can no longer find anyone to lend/give them more.

I think a much more significant change will come about from Sky's inability to stop people from providing free streams of the games that they charge money for. In the end the issue won't be what the Premier League do with all the money they have, it will be how can they convince anyone to continue to pay them what they have got used to. When this happens I will really enjoy the likes of Scuntamore moaning to the press at how these evil people have taken all their money away and how they are struggling to pay the players enough to buy a new house every week.

In the meantime I guess we have to be grateful for the £650k we get in 2017/18 and the £430k we get in 2018/19.

Or better still let them form the global breakaway league they keep talking about with all the top clubs. It will fall flat on its arse because you can't buy a culture, just like places like the MLS and China have and will find out.

I don't think I watch any CL anymore. I know it can be breathtaking when you get games like PSG and Barcelona, but it can also be incredibly plastic

In addition, if you go to football every week (I know some of us aren't because of circumstance at the moment), you can be footballed out. My passion as a supporter means I can stand in the pissing rain at Yeovil and get soaked to the bone for a 1-1 draw ahead of the prospect of watching Man Utd compete in the Dubai open and other silly 'brand' tournaments

If I'm honest, If people don't get that then I question if they get football at all

Cant remember the last time I bothered with the Champions League in all honesty...

Was probably the Man Utd v Chelsea Final.

Its just tiring though how every game has to be advertised to the hilt... i.e. ReUnited was Arsenal v Man Utd, Heavyweight week included a ton of derbies AND Burnley v Man Utd!! - Just stop, just because ONE meeting saw an excellent match 10-years ago doesnt mean that same fixture will produce the same sort of action every time going forward

The casino economics of football is unquestionably due to the grotesque sums being pumped into the game, sorry, industry - football is enslaved to its regime of financial steroids.

In the Champ how does, indeed how can, a club like Burton Albion compete with up to half its rivals receiving parachute payments?

I agree that the Not-Only-Champions-But-As-Low-As-Fourth-League has little appeal, an endless repetition of Barcenal v Inter Munich. And if fourth is good enough, does that mean that every cup semi-finalist should get to keep the trophy for three months?

Sky are allowing us to watch the gripping battle for the 4th place trophy, this season.

I don't really bother with premier league or champions league. I watched the league one play offs, last Thursday instead of Europa league, chose Hartlepool over Everton match and watched non league play off instead of the Sunday football.

I have always argued that in order to put English football back into financial equilibrium, the FAPL as a separate entity needs to be disbanded, and responsibility for TV revenue distribution put back in the hands of a reformed FA, thus replicating the structure in Germany, where football at every level from grass roots to national team performs better than in England. Here is stark evidence to support my case, I would assert.

The appalling arrogance and lack of accountability of the FAPL is summarised in their assumption that it is their money to dispense like alms money to the rest of football. It's not their money. It's our money. We are the stakeholders in this. Without us, it would not exist.

Oh wait, some people will say, so much money comes from overseas now. So what? Try moving the FAPL lock stock and barrel to SE Asia and see how that works. The FAPL is part of English football. It is rooted here in its stadia, its traditions, its unique fan culture, which does not require some clown with a megaphone to tell fans when and what to chant. This was true long before the FAPL was created, and the former sales director of Yellow Pages started trousering shedloads of money for negotiating deals with TV companies that they are all falling over themselves to conclude. If you ask foreign fans to name top English clubs they've heard of, the names of Leeds, Blackburn, Bolton, Aston Villa Nottingham Forest and Sheffield Wednesday are more likely to be named than those of Watford, Bourenmouth or Crystal frigging Palace. There is no justification, for the FAPL to be a separate entity which dispenses the money generated by English football.

I did find it particularly amusing that the PL's response to a small FL club complaining about the lack of support they receive was to point out how supportive they actually are...by obliquely threatening to remove their funding. That's not support, that's hostage taking.

But we already knew this from back when the academy categories were introduced. They brought in levels where you could pluck talent from the level below you, and deliberately made it so the levels weren't to do with production success but cash. You had to spend x amount to be category 1 based on required staff and facilities. When the FL clubs pointed out this was a scam, they were threatened with the funding they rely on to survive being pulled, so they were essentially blackmailed into accepting that rich Prem teams can nick the players you've spent years developing for a pittance. This bullshit is nothing new and sadly it's never going to change.

The thing is that while clubs take the meager offerings from the PL, to keep themselves afloat, the PL will become richer and richer and also expect more and more in return for their "charity". The clubs are better off future proofing themselves and going part time, then telling the PL to stick it.

The premier league is set up to run as a business and is very successful at that. Despite any fluffy mission statements to the contrary the football, football clubs and football fans' welfare and interests are peripheral.

It's shite but it's the reality. However if we all get fed up and everyone cancels their sky and BT subscriptions the revolution will happen that night. Until then fans just enable it all.

The Chinese super league is gearing itself up to take over as the leading league in next 20 years so they would do well to take heed of that and stop disenfranchising their domestic audience as the global one is temporary. They won't though and will continue to milk it and disregard the very people and institutions that are the foundation of their rotten poxy soap opera circus the preside over. (Would still like us to get back up there though lolz).

Football will die without support at the lowest level but those in charge don't give a shit.

Makes me wonder if Football at the highest level in England will die first.

Fans of the big clubs dont need to go to the Grounds to watch their players... Kodi is going no where all the while 3pm games can be shown in China and the United States, as the price of tickets go up, the more people will be turned away from the Grounds in the Premier League and the more they'll be turned away from the SKY Subscriptions.

Up until next season though fans of the Football League sides didnt have this opportunity available to them, if you want to see your side whether it be Charlton | Accrington or Newcastle every week the only choice you have is to go to the game and apart from the sides receiving parachute payments, because they've learnt to sustain themselves on smaller budgets, they'll suffer less when / if the Premier League ever crashes.

Of course I say up until next season because the ability to watch every Football League game if you live outside of the UK will come into play and I'd be shocked if this Service wasn't limited to Kodi either.

Last week I watched Millwall v Scunthorpe on TV. Well as much as I could take. I don't know how much the players in those two teams were paid this season but whatever it was they were overpaid. I don't think tennis players or golfers ranked outside the world top 20,000 can expect to make a living out of playing the game they love so why should football players?

It would be nice to see the fans groups - Supporters Direct and particularly the FSF -coming out in support too. But they won't. And you know why? Because the FAPL make donations to them both. Not enough for them to survive, but SD especially are in dire straits financially since the Co-op Bank, previously a key funder, itself fell on hard times. It's "shut up" money, like the donations oligarchs make to both major political parties, claiming that they are 'supporting democracy'.

But of course, the individual Trusts can get together. We have already proved that over the Olympic Stadium. I am going to contact them and see if we can make a joint statement.

It could be argued that we have too many professional clubs, but I think it is healthy. The Premier League was formed so the big clubs could have more power, and power equals money. We currently have a Premier League that is not the best League in the World - The Champions League would suggest Spain and Germany are well ahead of us, and Italy can make a claim for overtaking the Premier League too. Unlike the German league, the Premier league couldn't care less about the national team. Encouraging lower league clubs to develop talent would be a factor that helped. If you look at Premier League youth teams, they are full of foreigners! They should pay lower league clubs more, but who is going to make them?

One thing I would like to see happen is to reward clubs outside of the Premier League who produce England internationals. So teams in the premier League or in receipt of parachute money would not be entitled to any money, but if an England International started at Crewe for instance, Crewe would recieve £1 million pounds for every 10 internationals they played - so a player gaining 50 caps would earn Crewe £5million. Peanuts to the Premier League, but providing lower league clubs an incentive to produce players and make it more likely that the Premier League has more English talent in it and the national team benefits!

To be fair to PL clubs, they are handicapped. They have to include a contingent of home grown English players in their squads. The players coming through the English coaching system are still mostly shit compared to the players coming through the coaching systems in the other CL countries.

To be fair to PL clubs, they are handicapped. They have to include a contingent of home grown English players in their squads. The players coming through the English coaching system are still mostly shit compared to the players coming through the coaching systems in the other CL countries.

I don't think we should be fair to PL clubs as they don't deserve it! They could invest in more youth coaches - my idea would at least incentivise that through lower league clubs but we would still need more.

To be fair to PL clubs, they are handicapped. They have to include a contingent of home grown English players in their squads. The players coming through the English coaching system are still mostly shit compared to the players coming through the coaching systems in the other CL countries.

And that's because clubs were using so many foreign players, especially when compared to teams in other leagues.

So there may be a homegrown rule, but there are still fewer Englishmen playing in the the top tier than there are Spaniards in Spain's, Germans in Germany's etc.

Whilst blog hopping to double check some stuff I saw this: "From around 2002 to 2010, Germany invested approximately €520 million into its youth development system".

To be fair to PL clubs, they are handicapped. They have to include a contingent of home grown English players in their squads. The players coming through the English coaching system are still mostly shit compared to the players coming through the coaching systems in the other CL countries.

And that's because clubs were using so many foreign players, especially when compared to teams in other leagues.

So there may be a homegrown rule, but there are still fewer Englishmen playing in the the top tier than there are Spaniards in Spain's, Germans in Germany's etc.

Whilst blog hopping to double check some stuff I saw this: "From around 2002 to 2010, Germany invested approximately €520 million into its youth development system".

In Germany the DFB (their FA) who really run the game, took it by the scruff of the neck after the 2000 low point for German football. One of the things they did was make it mandatory for Bundesliga clubs to invest in an academy. I think the investment level was £1m, and at that time was not a small sum, as the Bundesliga then wasn't attracting big TV money. And what was the result? The terrifying continuous production line of young talent which ensures that I will probably never again see England beat Germany in a competitive match.

So let's not talk about the PL being handicapped, except by the greed of their owners.

@Uboat David Dein is one of the architects of this shitfest. I couldn't have attended that. I'd have been thrown out after losing my rag. I think Kevin Miles of the FSF wanted to throw me out of the Supporters Summit in Manchester for airing my views along these lines, but he could see I wasn't alone. But apparently it had been years since anyone had pointed to the elephant in the room at such a gathering, and people like Kevin Miles get too close to the black heart of power. That's part of the problem. They've got the national supporter groups in a headlock.